Happy Birthday Dad!

My dad is 70 today! xo!

Love Cocoon Knitting Pattern

I've blogged about love cocoons here and here and here. To recap though, the original pattern is Melissa's Laurel Love Cocoon pattern. Here are my changes - I'll try to post them to ravelry soon also. To those of you who don't knit, I do offer these in my etsy shop. Enjoy! xo

This pattern property of Goodness Recycled. Intended for personal use only. No portion of this pattern may be sold or copied without my permission. Thanks.


You will need:
bulky yarn - 1 skein
size 13 circular needles, 16 inches long
size 13 double pointed needles
tapestry needle for finishing

Cast On 40 stitches and join for knitting in the round, being careful not to twist.
K2P2 - follow this pattern for as many rows as you like to form the "collar". (I'm making my "collars" wide these days - you can see a small collar on the third cocoon link above, but I usually knit for about 10 rows.)
K all stitches until piece measures between 13 and 14 inches.
Place stitch marker.
row 1: K8, K2tog - continue to end of round
row 2: K all stitches
row 3: K7, K2tog - continue to end of round
row 4: K all stitches
row 5: K6, K2tog - continue to end of round
row 6: K5, K2tog - continue to end of round
row 7: K4, K2tog - continue to end of round
row 8: K3, K2tog - continue to end of round
row 9: K all stitches
{switch to dpns}
row 10: K2, K2tog - continue to end of round
row 11: K1, K2 tog
eight stitches should remain
sew through remaining eight stitches with tapestry needles, turn cocoon inside out and weave in end of yarn.

Take tapestry needle and weave in tail of yarn from beginning of cocoon. Blocking is usually not necessary, but if your cocoon needs a little shaping, spray with water and lay flat to dry.

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Kids' ATC Swap!

Bright Eyes + Blue Eyes is hosting a Kids' ATC Swap and I totally recommend it! Abbie and Ellie are modeling their swap after the swap that Erin and Blair organized in 2009. My kids all participated then and loved it. AND, we received all 15 cards in our swap (I was hoping for 10 or so of the expected 15). I have horrible luck with swaps - I don't get anything, or what is sent to me reeks of cigarette smoke...crazy ridiculous bad luck. So I stopped doing swaps years ago, but this one was kid-focused and we gave it a try. Great fun!

Each participant has to create five ATCs in their best work and be willing to mail them internationally if necessary. Interested? You can sign your kids up here. xo

Home again, home again...

 

 

We are happy and rested from our Spring Break - I don't think I've ever been to Florida when the weather was more perfect. Sunny skies, not too hot, but warm enough to swim every single day. And we came home just in time to settle in for a day of snow...good to be home...xo

It's crocus time...

...which means my kids are on Spring Break! See you here in two weeks or so! xo

Rats.

Well, I had big plans for this week (I think I have big plans for every week actually) but alas...other things came up. I'm going to try to post every weekday in April, so I'm planning for that a bit, and excited by the challenge.

In the meantime, meet Felix, my daughter's new rat. If you had told me before we had kids that one day we'd have a rat, I would have told you with confidence that you were crazy. Cray.zee. And yes, it does feel a bit hypocritical that if one of these took up residence in my basement, I would poison, trap and kill it without a second thought. But when one of these takes up residence in my daughter's bedroom, we buy it toys and feed it organic fruit and vegetable scraps.

We drank the koolaid that says rats make wonderful pets. And so far, we totally believe it to be true! xo

Next!

Thanks for all the kind wishes for my etsy shop. My house looks like a paper bomb exploded in it and then, of course, the day after I opened my shop after hours and hours and hours of my non-techno-self getting it all together I thought, "That was easy! What took me so long?" 

There are a plethora of bloggers posting their Spring cleaning efforts out there - I love these. I took some before photos today of my art room in all its paper-bomb-glory. Will share them when there is an "after" photo to share as well. This blog is also desperately overdue for a tutorial - I'm working on it!

I'm onto my next journal series idea. I have three kinds of books I collect - books with beautiful covers for me to collage, books with nostalgic or comical covers to just upcycle and now these - books with gorgeous patterned covers that need something, but don't need to be collaged completely.

Hope you'll stay tuned! xo

Deep breath...

My etsy shop opens at noon today! Hope you'll pop in! (And now I need to take a nice, long walk!) xo